A staff member at The San Diego LGBT Community Center has won the Julia Legaspi Trans Leadership Award for the second year straight.
In 2026, the newest Stonewall Award goes to The Center’s behavioral health services director, Pamuela Halliwell.
“Pam has strengthened our organization, and under her leadership (Behavioral Health Services) has provided life-affirming, transformative care to hundreds of LGBTQ+ community members,” said Cara Dessert, CEO of The San Diego LGBT Community Center, who also praised Halliwell’s work leading San Diego Black Pride among other endeavors. “From creating Rise Above the Stigma during National Suicide Prevention Month to publishing critical research on violence against Black trans women, Pam continues to advance equity, visibility, and systemic change grounded in lived experience and care. We are immensely proud.”
Halliwell has multiple roles in the community, all centered around tending to people’s mental health. She does so directly as a therapist and by managing the team of therapists at The Center, through national UC San Diego research projects on improving the health and safety of Black and brown trans people, and through her creative writing endeavors.
Her commitment to helping others began while growing up in San Diego as a transgender girl. Bullied at school and lacking familial support, she dealt with anger issues as a result. It wasn’t until a suicide attempt that things began to change, both in how she was treated and how she planned to move forward.
“I just decided, yes, if there was ever going to be a way to survive this, I wanted to put myself in a position to help other people navigate that and to feel accepted and like they had a path forward,” Halliwell recalled.
During the pandemic, Pamuela Halliwell began publishing a series grappling with grief through the lens of fantasy, including this book, “Garden of Hope.” (Cover courtesy Pamuela Halliwell)She found a way to do that as a therapist, where she helps people and their families navigate coming out, trauma recovery and social stigma and violence. Her therapy model looks not just at a person’s symptoms, which don’t appear in a vacuum, but at the societal structures that affect them.
“I feel honored and proud of being able to be in a position to help other people,” Halliwell said.
Another spillover from her girlhood is a love of writing. Halliwell uses that too, through a fantasy novel series called “Grieving Still,” in which the main characters unlock magic in the aftermath of losing someone close to them. It’s a fictional way to explore how people navigate grief, racism, police violence and transphobia.
“There’s so much that we can do with writing and with art in the world of fantasy,” Halliwell said. “It’s a way to process and express things that are true to life, but also, help people to feel connected but also empowered to make a change.”
For her role in empowering her community, Halliwell will receive the Stonewall Award honoring leadership by and for trans people at the Spirit of Stonewall Rally hosted by the Brass Rail at 6 p.m. on July 17.
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